Remember Fortnite’s AI-powered Darth Vader that led SAG-AFTRA to file an unfair labor practice charge against Epic Games? Well, the studio has now revealed the latest evolution of the technology.

Originally described as a “Persona device”, the tech is now simply called “conversations”, but the core remains the same: Fortnite developers can use conversations to create AI-powered characters with personalities and voices that can talk, react, respond to player actions, and even influence gameplay.

Released with Fortnite’s v40.20 update (launched on April 16), it is available in the Unreal Editor for Fortnite (UEFN) and allows island creators to build AI-powered NPCs capable of unscripted, real-time dialogue with players. Creators define a character’s personality, knowledge base, and behavior using prompts with as few as 20 lines of text. The underlying system is, of course, LLM-powered, generating responses dynamically based on what players say and do. Creators can also customize voice type, tone, delivery style, and personality traits.

The system goes far beyond simple conversations, according to Epic, as NPCs can react to and remember player actions within a session. They can drive gameplay outcomes; for example, a guard NPC could be persuaded to grant access to a restricted area. They may even trigger in-game events, dynamically adjust difficulty based on performance, or serve as adaptive narrators or commentators.

Within UEFN, Epic leverages Scene Graph and the Verse API. However, as mentioned earlier in the article, the tech is also largely powered by LLMs. Indeed, Epic confirmed that they are using Google’s Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite model to process audio inputs and generate text responses, and ElevenLabs to convert these into voiced outputs. These are some of the best models on the market for those respective use cases.

Epic clarified that it will not store any player audio. Moreover, the addition of conversations has required Epic to update its Fortnite Developer Rule set with the following clauses:

• Do not create a persona designed to provide medical or mental health guidance.
• Do not create a persona that role-plays as, simulates, or impersonates a date, romantic partner, or other intimate companion.
• Do not attempt to circumvent or undermine Epic’s safety systems, including intentionally designing your persona to bypass Epic’s content restrictions.

Developers who break these rules will receive enforcement actions, up to and including an account ban.

Notably, conversations is currently considered an Experimental feature. As such, Fortnite developers won’t be able to publish islands featuring AI NPCs at this time, at least until the feature reaches Beta state. The voice models are also not final, and the LLMs’ response times are slower than expected for the final release. During this Experimental phase, Epic plans to improve voice quality, reduce latency, and adjust the default NPC behavior.

On the flip side, it seems that the testing use of both Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite and ElevenLabs, which is not free, is currently shouldered by Epic. Whether this continues once the feature goes live to the public remains to be seen.

If you’re a Fortnite developer and wish to learn more about these AI-powered NPCs, Epic has released four pages of documentation:

About the author: With over two decades of experience in gaming journalism, Alessio Palumbo has led the gaming vertical at Wccftech since August 2015. He started working at a young age for Italian websites like Everyeye.it, Gamestar.it, Nextgame.it, and Multiplayer.it before kickstarting the indie English-language publication Worlds Factory as its founder and Editor in Chief.

In the last decade, he has coordinated the overall output of Wccftech’s gaming section, managed PR relations, assigned reviews, produced daily news coverage, edited gaming content as needed, and delivered game reviews.

Arguably, his trademark content is the long series of exclusive developer interviews that have been cited by Wikipedia and by the biggest news media and gaming publications.

His passion for technology also makes him knowledgeable when it comes to gaming hardware and tech. His favorite genres include RPGs, MMORPGs, and action/adventure games.

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